欧美同学会（中国留学人员联谊会）第七届理事会第四次会议在京召开

I don’t want a team that plays it safe. I want a team that screws things up and learns faster because of it. At OpenFortune ?? , we expect people to try stuff that doesn’t work. Then we carve out time to talk about what flopped and how we can improve it. If you're not carving out time to talk about mistakes, your team will default to: 1) Silence 2) Waiting for permission 3) Chronic perfectionism All of which slow down momentum and kill creativity. Speed has never been a larger competitive advantage in startups and if your team’s scared to mess up, they’ll never move fast enough to win.

After LavCup, I promised myself I’d never build something that scaled one unit at a time again. Stadium by stadium. Hole by hole. Literally. We had to convince venues to drill into their walls to install our product. Thousands of holes, thousands of potential points of failure (and that was just to get started). So the next time around, the filter was clear. 1) Is scale built in? 2) Can I reuse the knowledge I already earned the hard way? That’s what drew me to the idea of OpenFortune ?? With a few producers controlling the entire fortune cookie market, we didn’t need to knock on 5,000 doors. Just a handful of the right ones. Distribution was concentrated. Scale was possible without hand-to-hand combat. And unlike tech, which never clicked for me, this had a physical component. Real product. Tangible impact. I knew how to tell that story. Knew how to build in that world. This was close enough to what I’d already done, but with way more leverage baked in. The opportunity was massive, but the industry was ancient. We'd have to build the playbook as we went. And 8 years later, that's exactly what we've been doing.

Presenting: The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever filmed... and possibly my proudest work. One of the first full-scale, original commercials we ever recorded for OpenFortune ??. And my first time playing leading man (on screen). To this day I'm proud how much this work: -Turns our Zoom waiting room into a laugh-out-loud icebreaker -Gives prospects proof that the OpenFortune creative team is INSANE -Shakes things up in the desert dry land of B2B meetings -Salutes one of my favorite ad campaigns in all startup history Hat tip to Michael Dubin at Dollar Shave Club for the inspo. So damn fun.

Doug Zarkin is spot on with this take. Most marketers treat acquisition like the main event and retention like an afterthought. But the brands that win long-term are ones that flip this equation. They understand that keeping a customer, earning their trust, and creating experiences worth coming back for is just as important (if not more) than getting them in the door the first time. Congrats to Doug on the new gig as CMO of Take 5. Pumped to see you crush it.

Over the last 8 years at OpenFortune ?? , we’ve worked with every kind of brand you can imagine. And here’s what I always try to explain: You can play it safe with your creative. But when you do, you’re also capping your upside. We’ve A/B tested witty vs. dry copy more times than I can count. Same campaign. Same format. Same incentive. One version is clever, unexpected, human. The other is safe, literal, corporate. And the results? The witty version always wins: more shares and engagement, better scan rates, higher recall. It’s not even close. We’ve seen this play out with national credit unions, regional banks, automotive clients, healthcare industries that aren’t exactly known for being “funny.” You don’t have to turn your brand into a joke. You don’t need to sacrifice professionalism. But if you want attention in 2025, you do need to sound like someone your audience might actually want to hear from. Because no one shares something that feels like it was redlined 5 times by legal. A lot of the time, the only thing standing in the way of better performance is fear. Fear of sounding different. Fear of being too casual. Fear of trying something new. So listen closely: Humor and wit aren’t a “nice-to-have.” They’re your edge. They’re what get people to stop, smile, and remember your brand long after the moment’s over.

There's a term that's been making the rounds lately: brandformance. At first, I liked it. Then it felt cringe-worthy. But after some reflection, I realized it's a real phenomenon. Brandformance is about finding that sweet spot where brand building and performance marketing intersect. It's about having a channel that can deliver true brand performance. When you achieve that, you're winning the game. And we’re seeing that right now with OpenFortune ??. 1) Brand lift We start with brand lift, awareness, and equity right out of the gate. We prove it with measurement, which I'm always happy to share. 2) Driving consideration We generate lead flow for clients to help drive customers to their SMS or email lists. (ex our collab with Liquid Death, driving SMS signups for their horoscopes using misfortunes). It's a powerful remarketing tool. 3) Conversion Brands report direct sales from QR code scans on fortune cookies. Mind-blowing, but it's happening. Do I think this happens with other channels? Not really. I've never pulled over for a radio ad to buy a product. Never bought anything because of a billboard. TV? Maybe once or twice, but that's just me. Our platform touches every stage of the funnel. We start with brand awareness, equity, and lift at the top. Then we drive lead flow and conversion - direct product and service purchases that are fully attributable. So, brandformance is real. I know because I see it happening. If you can find a channel that drives this kind of performance, that's where the real winning happens. It's pretty awesome when you think about it.

People keep asking us which bucket OpenFortune ?? lives in. OOH? Experiential? Social? The answer: none of them. We’re building a new kind of platform. Something that starts offline, spreads online, and drives measurable outcomes in both places. A platform for branded content distribution. A platform for sparking curiosity and sharing at scale. A platform that lives in people’s hands, ends up in their social feeds, and drives actual organic behavior. We’re not just getting “seen.” We’re getting searched. We’re getting shared. Yes, our media shows up in the physical world. Yes, it’s tangible. Yes, it looks different than anything else in your mix. But that’s exactly the point. The second you try to wedge OpenFortune into an old-school category or 100-year old mental model, you miss what makes it work.

If I were a CMO planning for 2025 and beyond, I’d be doubling down on one thing: PHYSICAL IRL marketing / experiences. Why? Because the internet is exhausted. Everyone’s tuning out. Scrolling past. Muting brands. Meanwhile, the real world is making a comeback. I saw something wild in Singapore a few months ago. A 20-foot inflatable Kiss Kiss Angel crybaby. Hundreds of people mobbed the installation. Screaming. Taking selfies. Losing their minds. Why? Because this wasn’t just an inflatable baby. It was their baby. A cult character with a loyal fanbase. And the brand behind it? Popmart didn’t try to go viral. They didn’t carpet-bomb with ads. They went deep. They built a moment their 100 true fans would remember and those fans showed up, big. That’s the move in 2025. Digital is noisy. Physical is the future. If you’re trying to break through ad fatigue this year, don’t just go wide. Go deep. Make something physical. Make it memorable. Make it for the people who already care. They’ll do the rest.

My biggest secret to CRUSHING it at conferences... Just be yourself. Most brands try to win by doing the same thing as everyone else— big booths, flashy promos, and 'swag' that you throw away immediately when you leave the event. That's why OpenFortune ?? goes in the opposite direction for every conference we attend. → We walk around with a bag of fortune cookies and started proposing to strangers → We run ridiculous man-on-the-street interviews → We turned our booth into a podcast studio for CMO Weekly, giving top marketing leaders a reason to sit down and talk And guess what? It works. People stop. Laugh. Engage. And they sure as hell remembered us after the event.

Moments like these give me goosebumps. This is the true value of fortune cookie ads that no CPM estimate or performance metric can capture. Raw human emotion. So damn grateful that our team gets to play a small role in these life-changing moments every day.